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Occurrences in the Congressional Record

"When he was mayor, Michael Bloomberg began in the wake of Hurricane Sandy an ambitious plan to shore up New York with levees, with storm barriers, and with other coastal defenses to make that great city more resilient in the face of rising seas. That plan is estimated to cost nearly $20 billion to fortify just one city, albeit a great one—New York City—against rising seas."

"The American Society of Civil Engineers, who build these things, have graded the American infrastructure, and I just want to go through it: aviation, our airports, which I believe the Vice President, in referring to LaGuardia, said even the developing countries have a better airport than LaGuardia in New York City, aviation, a D; bridges, C-plus—as I said, 156,000 deficient; dams, D; running water, D; energy, D-plus; hazardous waste, D; inland waterways, D; levees, to protect us from floods, D; our ports, a C; public parks and recreation, C; our railroads, C-plus—whoa, a C-plus; our highways, a D; our schools, that is where our kids are, a D; solid waste, we are doing pretty well, that is a B; our transit systems, D; wastewater, a D."

"Mr. Speaker, our bridges are crumbling, and we need to invest in building and fixing them. The Nation’s estimated 100,000 miles of levees can be found in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. The reliability of these levees is unknown in many cases, and the country has yet to establish a national levee safety program."

"The legislation allows waivers to be granted only if all of the following conditions are met: communities must already have taken steps to repair damaged levees, such as seeking Federal authorization of a levee project, and there must be previously existing plans to obtain the requisite 100-year flood protection in the near future."

"So if we want to create more than 35 permanent jobs, maybe we should be serious about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure; that is, our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, our dams, our levees, our rail system, our airports. Think of what America would look like when, instead of having a sub-par infrastructure—an infrastructure now ranked 12th in the world—we lead the world with cutting edge technology. A $1 trillion investment could put 13 million Americans back to work at good wages. In my view, that is exactly what we should be doing."

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